Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Three boars in the anchorage. The restaurant dinghy dock is at the left, black floats

From Ft Lauderdale to the anchorage south of the Lantana Bridge there are 13 bridges to pass through. All but a couple only open at specific times like on the hour and half hour or 15 min before and after the top of the hour. However, they are very well coordinated. If you can do 7 kts, you can make every bridge without waiting like we did today. Usually that's not a problem for us except when the current is running two to three knots at peak speed. When the current was that fast today, it just happened to be in our favor, so that helped.

The dinghy dock on the town docks are not as nice but functional

We had not tried the anchorage south of the Lantana Bridge before. We chose it today because we wanted to have dinner with Joe Mastri, one of our old time friends from the Poughkeepsie YC. The Old Key Lime House restaurant is right on the water and has a floating dinghy dock. If you don't have business at the restaurant, there's a town dock too. Their dinghy dock is not floating but you can tie up and climb the ladders to get ashore. The anchorage itself is larger than it appears. You will have 7 ft MLW about 0.1 Nm off the twin town launch sites. You may get some wakes from the boats roaring out of the launching area but it settles down at night.

Peaceful sunset

The restaurant was very busy but there was ample seating for all. It's divided into the main restaurant and a bar which is about the same size and serves a smaller menu. We ordered off the "favorites" menu which I later found out was the same as the bar menu. Happy Hour has 1/2 price drinks but that's only honored at the bar restaurant, not the main one. If we went again, we would certainly dine at the bar. You actually have a better view of the water and you're closer to your dinghy.

On Wednesday we headed for one of our favorite anchorages, the Hobe Sound anchorage while going through another dozen or so bridges, not as well coordinated as the ones today. Hopefully it's then
Vero Beach followed by Titusville where we'll spend a few days.

2
comments:

I like the fact, that like us, you prefer to anchor or take a mooring. Not only cuts down on $$$ but also allows you privacy. We have a wind generator and a solar panel so we can enjoy a few amenities when at anchor. Question: Have you sailed at all so far on your trip north?Janice

Janice, we sailed while in Key West. When on the ICW it's very difficult to sail except in North Carolia when crossing the sounds. The ICW is too narrow and bridge operators frown on sailing through bridges although some get away with it. We sail when we can but we do a lot of motor sailing.